History Tuesday: High Bar

Last of my History lesson Tuesdays featuring men’s gymnastics. This one on my favorite events to watch but least favorite to do.  I never competed High bar as a gymnast except one time in college when my team competed in Michigan at a meet held during a snow storm. The opposing team had only a…

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History Tuesday: Balance Beam

Balance beam is an apparatus as old as 261 years. Johan Cristoph GutsMuth (1759-1839) actually dedicated a chapter in his book Gymnastics for Youth and you can bet that the event was around before he was published. GutsMuth described the beam as a rounded pine tree trunk about 64 feet long. Founder of Gymnastics Fredrich…

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The race is not always to the swiftest

I saw this video, its short and it’s very inspirational.  Watch her run, especially at the end. Her strides are so beautiful and in context even more so. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM5A1K6TxxM] Heather Dorniden trained hard and had one outcome in mind. Her definition of victory included only one possible end. Despite her fall she never gave up.…

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History Tuesday: Parallel Bars

Here is another brief article about the history of gymnastics. As a kid I remember my brother getting a set of 1950 circa P-Bars from an old gym. We set them up in our back yard and I remember helping him put the rails in because they were so heavy. I remember too playing gymnastics…

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Did you win today?

I had a gymnast, let’s call him Nick. (this is way back when I coached boys). Nick was the kind of kid would take on challenges only if he knew he could win.  He was young and had all kinds of talent, I used to say “dude you got talent falling off of you, pick…

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History Tuesday

Here is a brief article on the “history of gymnastics”. But on a larger scale, I love this stuff and I think it’s cool to look at some of the names from the past, many of the names of people are attached to skills we teach today. So this one is for you history buffs:…

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Negative space

I am getting deep here, and maybe a little uncomfortable in talking beyond what most would feel is my area of “expertise”. Bear with me. I am a frequent insomniac, not the up all night kind, but the kind that wakes at 3:30 and falls back asleep at 6:00. That area of wakeful un-productiveness has…

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taking the good with the bad

Recently the gymnastics world has been a blaze with the news of Paul Hamm. I felt that I should say something here because so many people have asked me my opinion. I also think that what we need to do is re-focus on what is important. So… Paul should apologize. He has made a mistake,…

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One Child at a Time

Youth obesity has become the epidemic of note throughout society. Countless governmental bodies, independent organizations and mainstream media outlets are constantly revealing statistics and projections related to this problem. According to several sources, the youth overweight/obesity numbers exceed 30 percent of people under the age of 18 in the United States and are expected to…

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I can’t cry.

Two weeks ago we had the misfortune of losing one of our staff. Coach Ty Clark, of the Special Motion program and the TnT team died suddenly. I was in Costa Rica when I heard the news and though many miles separated us from home, both Steph and I were devastated. Last week we had…

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